Chap. II.

EGYPTIAN.

33

The site selected for the new city was on the western side of the Nile , between theriver and the lake Mareotis,—-for which nature had done much, and which seemedcapable of being made by art all that w’as desirable; and an opportunity was affordedto humble the Tyrians, to divert that commerce which they had long enjoyed; tochange the current of the Indian trade by Suez, the Nile , and its canal, to the new city ofAlexandria.

In the midst of the capacious bay on the shores of which the city was marked out, and atsome distance from the mainland, lay the island of Pharos, which acted as a naturalbreakwater, and which, in the time of Strabo , was of an oblong form; this Dinocrates unitedwith the mainland by an extensive causeway, or earth wall, and, from its length being7 stadia, it was called the heptastadium. This grand terrace divided the bay into twoharbours, which communicated with each other by means of two openings left for vessels topass from one to the other.

ALEXANDRIA

Fig. 47

'Die city was marked out with great regularity: its form was that of a Macedonianmantle or cloak, and three hundred and twenty years before Christ the walls were con-

D